Reception w/b 3rd October
Date: 7th Oct 2022 @ 4:49pm
Our harvest service was a wonderful way to conclude a wonderful week. We were so proud to see the children standing up to speak so confidently and with such joyful smiles.
We have continued to explore harvest throughout our week, inspired by the traditional tale ‘The Little Red Hen’. We can now confidently retell this story in a ‘Talk for Writing’ style, as demonstrated beautifully in church this morning. To help us to understand this journey of growing and harvesting food, we have replicated the Little Red Hen’s journey.
On Monday, we planted and watered. Instead of corn, we wanted to choose something that we could see growing very quickly. We therefore decided to plant some cress! Thank you so much to anybody who sent in an egg box. After discussing the things that a plant needs to grow, we enjoyed the process of popping some cotton wool into an egg box, making sure it was damp and then sprinkling the seeds. We knew that we needed to place these egg boxes on the windowsill to be close to the sun. It is very exciting to see how the cress has progressed each day; we may even get to sample some next week!
On Tuesday, we followed the next three steps of the story. First, we needed to cut the corn. We enjoyed colouring and cutting pictures of corn as well as snipping some yellow and green straws. This was a great opportunity to practise our cutting skills. Next, we needed to carry the corn to the mill. We enjoyed acting this out in a ‘small world’ tuff tray, which contained a variety of grains for us to explore. It was wonderful to observe the children’s thorough knowledge of the story as they independently acted it out in the tuff tray. Then, we needed to grind the corn. We know that, in the story, the Little Red Hen, takes the corn to the mill where grinding stones are used. To mimic this process, we used a pestle and mortar to grind some grains. We noticed that this made a fine dust that looked very much like…flour! This was especially obvious when grinding the oats.
On Wednesday, it was time to make the bread! We noticed the connection between the grinding of the grains on the previous day and the flour we needed to use in our recipe. We were especially fascinated by the yeast and how its job is to make the bread rise. Over lunchtime, we observed how our bread rolls increased in size and the cling film fogged up. The yeast was working! Another exciting stage in the bread making process was kneading. We each worked hard to knead our dough until it was smooth and stretchy; this was great for our fine motor skills. We then shaped the rolls to look like one of the characters from the story – a hen, bull, rat or cat.
On Thursday, it was at last time to eat the bread! We enjoyed adding some margarine or jam to our bread roll before giving it a taste. According to the children, it was delicious!
We have also enjoyed several other harvest themed activities. Mrs Edwards helped us to create some wonderful crafts on Thursday afternoon, such as scarecrow faces! On Friday, we used a selection of harvest vegetables (potatoes, carrots, leeks, broccoli and corn) to print. It was interesting to observe the different textures and shapes that could be made with each vegetable. Lots of us were able to produce a repeating pattern, such as: leek, potato, leek, potato, leek…
In phonics, we have learnt four new sounds – i, n, p and g. Unusually, to form i, we must take our pencil off of the page! This letter looks a bit like an insect so we go ‘down the body and dot for the head’. We emphasised that this is just a dot, not a big circle! The formation rhyme for n was ‘down Nobby and over his net’. We must start at Nobby’s head, go down to his toes and then back up again before going over his net – we are not allowed to take our pencils off of the page. When writing p, we said ‘down the pirate’s plait and around his face’, ensuring that the pirate was facing the correct direction. Finally, the rhyme for g was ‘around the girl’s face, down her hair and give her a curl’. We noticed that the formation of a, d and g all start in the same way. This week, we have introduced ‘word time’ in small groups. We have been using magnetic tiles to spell some CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words using our known sounds (e.g. mat, sad, pin, tap). We will continue to practise our blending skills which will help us to learn to read and spell words. It would be wonderful if children could continue to practise their letter formation and watch the Read Write Inc home videos.
This week, we have immersed ourselves in our ‘Bears’ topic, focusing on the story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. On Monday, we enjoyed reading the story and joining in with actions and repeated refrains. On Tuesday, our learning continued into Forest School where we went on our own bear hunt! We walked through the long wavy grass on the field, through the deep cold river (a water tray to splash through), through the thick oozy mud in the mud pit, through our own deep dark forest, acted out travelling through the swirling whirling snowstorm and finally inside the narrow gloomy cave. Luckily, our bear hunt didn’t end with us being chased by a bear! As the photos show, this was such a rich learning experience full of language opportunities and sensory fun. This has made the events of the story very memorable and will help us with our sequencing tasks next week. On Thursday, during our Forest School session, we made bears. We shaped clay to create the body which was wonderful for developing our fine motor skills. We then employed our creativity to use nature to add features to the bears.
In English, our ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ focus has continued. In our whole class inputs, we have used our senses to think carefully about our setting. We have especially thought about what each setting would feel like, smell like and sound like. There were some fantastic suggestions and lots of wonderful language was used, such as ‘crunchy leaves’, ‘gooey mud’, ‘bumpy trees’, ‘fresh flowers’ and ‘stinky fish’! In our small group activities, we have been sequencing the events of the story. Attached to each image from the story was the corresponding image from our Forest School bear hunt to help us to remember the journey that we followed. We were then writing some of the initial sounds e.g. big _ark forest – we were able to hear that ‘dark’ begins with ‘d’ and then write this in the gap.
In maths this week, the children have engaged with activities that draw attention to the purpose of counting – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are. We have been helping the Gruffalo to improve his counting skills! Last week, we used subitising to identify the number in a set; this week we have been developing our counting skills to enable us to identify how many there are in a set that cannot be subitised. This connects subitising and counting to cardinality whereby the last number in the count tells us ‘how many’ things there are altogether. We have also practised developing 1:1 correspondence, by counting numbers at the same time as moving or tagging the objects. We have also explored how all sorts of things can be counted, including sounds.
In Forest School, we made journey sticks. Mr Simmons demonstrated how he walked through Forest School, attaching an object from each area as he went (e.g. a leaf from a particular type of tree). He then showed us how this could be used to help to retrace his steps and follow the same journey. We then enjoyed walking our own journeys through Forest School and making corresponding journey sticks.
Due to our Church service, we had missed our PE slot for the week. Instead, we enjoyed getting out the parachute! We each had chance to throw a beanbag onto the parachute after saying the letter/number written on it. This was a very fun phonics review session! We then had great fun trying to bounce the beanbags up to the ceiling.
It has been a week packed full of learning and joy, as shown from the many photos below. We look forward to another superb week next week. I hope that you all enjoy a wonderful weekend.
With many thanks as ever,
Miss Witham
